


it is the storm in me

by viverella



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, a lot of angst basically but it gets lighter at the end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-16 16:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11832813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: Jim has always assumed he was going to die young, until one day, years later, he looks up and realizes that he doesn't anymore.(5 times Jim thought he would die young + 1 time he hoped to grow old)





	it is the storm in me

**Author's Note:**

> PRAISE THE LORD I finally have inspiration to write these two again! what is this fic? is it going to be any good? who knows but I missed writing these two a lot so. worth it. 
> 
> musings on death throughout (though no actual graphic death) and mentions of Tarsus IV planned for future chapter(s), hence the warnings, but as long as you're chill with that - proceed! hope you enjoy!
> 
> (title/chapter titles borrowed from the poem quoted in part below)

_I said to the the sun_  
_“Tell me about the big bang”_  
_The sun said_  
_“it hurts to become”_

— From _I Sing The Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out_ , by Andrea Gibson

  


A side-effect of everyone assuming you’ll be the hero you’ve never had any desire to be, Jim supposes in hindsight, is growing up assuming you’re going to die young. After all, it feels a little like a family legacy at this point, with all the fuss that people make of it. His father lived just long enough to welcome his youngest child into the world and then promptly left it, and it’s not why people speak of George Kirk like a hero, but it might as well be for how they do it. It’s supposed to be inspirational probably, Jim thinks sometimes, something like honoring George Kirk’s memory and urging the family to continue on as he would’ve wanted ( _as he would’ve wanted_ , Jim often thinks spitefully, as if the living could ever speak for the dead). But he looks at his family sometimes – at his brother Sammy who’s threatened to run away from home at least half a dozen times that Jim can remember, at his mother who’s always running off to the stars like she can escape the reality of her life if she just stays out in the black for long enough, at Frank who’s a step-father in name and nothing else, who takes and takes and takes and never thinks twice about what’ll happen when there’s nothing left – and thinks that maybe they’d all be better off if people stopped talking about it altogether. 

Grandpa Tiberius dies when Jim is ten. It’s during the night and it’s in his sleep and everyone keeps saying that it’s good, it’s peaceful. Jim wonders how something as final as death could ever be called good. He goes to the service for Grandpa Tiberius feeling ragged and raw and anything but peaceful and wonders what he ever did to deserve having the one stable parental figure he had left in his life ripped away so suddenly. It’s not made any better by the fact that by the time they all get home after the service, Frank is already roaring drunk, making a fuss like he owns the place now that the last of the Kirk patriarchs are gone, and Jim doesn’t remember his grandmother much because she was gone before he could wrap his head around the pain of that, but he remembers her enough to imagine her shaking her head at Frank and wondering how anyone could have such an antiquated view of gender in the 23rd century. 

Frank walks around the house like he’s claiming everything as his own, and Sammy shouts at him like he always does ( _This isn’t your home! This isn’t your family!_ ) and Frank shouts back, convinced as always that just because he’s never laid a hand on the two boys that he’s somehow in the right. Jim hides in the garage like he always does, in the farthest corner of the house away from the kitchen where Sammy and Frank are arguing, curled up in his father’s old Corvette, running his fingers over the soft leather interior and trying to imagine what the man who painstakingly restored this car was like. 

The argument comes to a head with Sammy crashing through the garage with a backpack slung over his shoulder, and he shouts back into the house, “You know what? Fuck you! I don’t need this. I’m leaving. Have fun explaining that to mom.”

Jim watches with wide eyes as Sammy marches out the open garage door and out into the endless green beyond. Frank makes a half-hearted attempt to chase after him, but mostly looks smugly satisfied with himself, a smirk on his face that makes Jim sick. 

“Yeah?” Frank shouts after Sammy, his words already running together in a way that Jim knows means there won’t be a moment of peace in the house for the rest of the night. “Well, good fucking riddance!” 

Jim shrinks back in his seat as Frank turns to lumber back into the house, hoping he doesn’t see Jim hiding in his father’s car. Frank hates that. But it’s like the universe has decided not to be kind to Jim today, and Frank spots him and immediately stops in his tracks. 

“Hey!” Frank bellows. “What the hell are you doing in there? Get out of my car!”

Frank approaches to yank the door open, but Jim beats him there, scrabbling across the leather seat to jam his finger down on the lock button. He doesn’t know why he does it, but he’s suddenly overcome not with fear or apprehension, but with something sharper and heavier, something like anger. Maybe it’s that he feels like any semblance family he had left has been wrenched away from him too soon, too quickly. Maybe it’s that Sammy’s departure has given him the courage to do something wild and bold. Maybe it’s just that Jim’s tired and tired of feeling useless and tired of feeling scared.

Frank bangs on the window of the car with an open hand, the loud smacks rattling the whole car. “Are you deaf?” he rages. “Get the hell out of my car!”

Jim hears his brother’s voice in his ears as he shouts back, caught up with something brazen and impulsive, something like lightning running through his veins, “It’s not your car. It never will be.”

Jim scrambles around inside the car, looking for a way out, and when he bumps the sun visor, he feels something drop into his lap. _Keys_ , he thinks, and smiles. It’s a small thing, but on this day, it feels like a victory.

Jim jams the car keys into the ignition and gives them a twist, making the engine roar to life. He feels that reckless thing in him leap into his throat, and before he can stop himself, he’s got one hand on the gear shift and the other on the wheel and he’s peeling out of his driveway to the sweet sight of Frank’s bewildered face. He tears down the country road that leads away from their house with little knowledge of how to drive and less of where he’s going, but as he pops the top off of the car, something seizes him, like joy, like freedom. 

The convertible top of the car whips off of the car entirely, flying off down the road like loose paper, and Jim laughs and whoops as he races down the empty country road, and he feels the heaviness from the day melt away. All the anger, all the hurt, all the loneliness in really only having Sammy to hold onto at the end of the day, his mother stuck somewhere in deep space, unable to come home even for this – all of it begins to leave Jim, leaving him feeling light and giddy, like he could take on the world. Years later, he’ll remember this moment as the first time he ever did something crazy or spontaneous. Years later, he’ll remember it as the first time he felt truly alive. Now, Jim scrambles into a leap out of his father’s old Corvette as it dives down into the quarry and feels dirt crunch under his arms as he hauls himself up onto the edge of the cliff. He looks down and watches as his father’s beloved car tumbles down, down, down, and out of sight as the sound of police sirens draws closer and closer. He thinks he should probably feel bad, doing away with something so cherished by his late father so easily and with so little care, but all he can feel is his heart pounding in his chest as he stares down into the quarry and thinks, _that could’ve been me, too_.

The thought doesn’t bother him maybe as much as it should, and Jim doesn’t really think anything of it at the time, chalking it up to his extensive experience with death at the age of ten and just worried about bracing himself for confronting the officer stepping of his bike not too far from him. He thinks about the whispered stories the adults used to tell each other when there were more of them around, when they thought the kids couldn’t hear, about how his father died in a fiery and dramatic fashion, and Jim thinks to himself that maybe, at the end of the day, he won’t be so bad at upholding his father’s legacy. And maybe, it won’t be so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are very much appreciated!!!
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://chirrutimwae.tumblr.com) if you like!!


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